


Wonderful Dreams

by cinnamondonut (cinnamxn)



Category: Moominvalley (Cartoon 2019), Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson
Genre: (not for long tho), Bathing/Washing, Found Family, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Non-Conforming Too-Ticki | Too-Ticky, Headcanon, Hibernation Insomnia?, Mid-Canon, Snusmumriken | Snufkin Has Paws, Too-Ticki | Too-Ticky Is a Mumrik, Trans Snusmumriken | Snufkin, unsafe binding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-24 00:03:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19712239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnamxn/pseuds/cinnamondonut
Summary: "Dont worry, we shall have wonderful dreams, and when we wake up it'll be spring."Snufkin wakes up well before spring. He's not alone, however, and finds a mumrik much like himself, with so many things to teach him.





	Wonderful Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Do you ever write something that's really personal (pronounced: you project hard onto characters via fanfic) and you feel like you need to write an essay about your choices to protect yourself in case your attempts to work out your feelings are problematic? I'm trying desperately not to do that. If I've made any mistakes or misconceptions, please tell me kindly, and I will be happy to work on any fixes. 
> 
> Assume this takes place in the beginning of Finn Family Moomintroll, which for those who haven't read, starts with Snufkin hibernating with the Moomins after having only recently met them that autumn in the events of Comet in Moominland. He begins to travel again the next winter, but it's never made clear why he chose to stay so long, and at what point he decided he would leave. I headcanon him as having been 13 here.

He doesn’t mean to wake up so early. There's a crushing feeling around his chest that yanks him from his dreams. It's an itch that won’t go away; covering his back and chest and beneath his armpits and he groans with frustration, which is hard to do because his lungs feel tight. He knows it's too early immediately, because the room is hardly lit, and Moomintroll and all the friends he met under the red skies of the comet are gone. He'll need to get back to sleep, but he's far too uncomfortable for that. A bath, he supposes. He best go for a bath. 

Bathing in this cold is far from appealing, and the well will be frozen over and inaccessible. He'll have to leave, he thinks. He'll have a proper bath in the bathhouse Moominpappa made; where he doesn't need to worry about fire or water making too much noise and waking his friends. It will be a bath so refreshing he won't be able to help wanting to sleep after it. 

Snow has started to bury Moominhouse. It’s collected in a great mound in the corners of the patio, covering the window and making it difficult to open, and when he climbs down the ladder, he can slide down the icy hill instead of chance jumping off the structure.

This causes an avalanche, of course, but it’s quite fun, and makes him forget for a moment how dreadful bathing in this cold will be. Only for a moment.

Even covered in snow, he can still recognise this landscape – there’s the bridge with a rim of white on its railings, and the river frozen beneath it, and there’s the edge of the Witch’s Forest, all grey and silent, and the Lonely Mountains stare at him, a depressed blue in the distance. The gardens are all buried, but he steps around them anyway out of politeness and habit, and recalls in his mind all the colour that has been sapped from the valley. 

The bathhouse sits on the edge of the ocean, and Snufkin wonders if his heart can take seeing the ocean frozen just like the river, so soon after the comet took it away from him.

The answer, he finds, is that it can’t.

Instead of the deep, rich blue that rolls and foams and breathes against a body of golden sand, he finds a pale lifeless flat. The ocean hasn’t been taken this time; it’s been trapped beneath all the snow and cold and somehow that’s just as bad, but he wipes the stinging cold tears and takes a painful breath of cold air, assuring himself that once he’s had a bath he’ll only need to sleep to find it back to normal.

Oddly, he sees footprints in the snow here. Many crisscross, but there's a clear trail leading where he's headed, and when he reaches the bathhouse itself, he finds that it’s tended well. Only a light scattering of recent snowfall covers it, and the doors and windows are completely clear, and the bathhouse seems warm and bright already.

There must surely be someone inside.

Snufkin frowns, then knocks to be polite. After all, even a squatter likes their privacy - he's all too familiar with that sentiment.

And now that he considers it, he can smell something nice coming from inside – a warm soup, not unlike the one he makes for himself on his travels, but better somehow. Then, there are the footfalls; quiet, shoeless, but heavy, strong.

The door opens for him, a blonde head poking out.

“Hullo,” Snufkin says, with a little wave of his paw.

“Hullo yerself. Whit brings ye out here in the cold? Ah heard ye were hibernating.”

He blinks up at the stranger, scratching absently at one of the many tingles irritating him. “Who told you that?” he asks after a moment’s thought.

“Too-Ticky hears many things.”

Snufkin itches more, and Too-Ticky opens the door wide for him. “Come in, it’s nice and warm in here.”

When living the life of a Snufkin, one must have very good instincts on who to trust – and although this stranger is spending winter in the Moomin’s bathhouse, their voice is foreign and kind, and they are made of soft, friendly shapes from the curve of their belly to the gleam in their eyes. They look, in fact, quite similar to himself, with the same fur on their head and the same point to their nose and the same shape of their toes. He knows he can trust them.

So he walks inside, and Too-Ticky makes a place for him on one of the benches, which has been covered in blankets, but he feels far too uncomfortable to wrap himself up, and stays standing, staring with wide eyes at the stove, bubbling with a fish soup.

“Ah’m Too-Ticky, though you’re too smart no’ to have worked that out b’now.” The door closes, and Too-ticky begins to stir the pot to keep it from burning. “What’s yer name?”

“I'm Snufkin.”

Too-Ticky nods, remaining focused for a while, and Snufkin feels dumb, but he can’t stop staring, trying to understand... "Yer givin' me an odd look, there."

“You sound like a lady…” he tries to put it as nicely as possible, “But you look rather like a man.”

Too-ticky stops stirring, and he worries that he’s offended them. “I’m… I’d like to know. So I don’t make any mistakes.”

“Ah’m not offended. And ah’m a lady, so ye dinna make mistakes.” And when he looks at her face, he realises she _isn’t_ offended – she’s smiling with a strange sort of fondness, reminding him of Moominmamma, and making him feel far worse for taking Mamma for granted.

“I’m a boy,” Snufkin tells her, and she nods in understanding, making him feel stupid for thinking it needed saying at all.

“A wee mumrik. Aren’t ye?” He nods. “Ah should know, we're cut from the same cloth,” she lifts up her hand, showing him her paws, which are much bigger than his, but familiar nonetheless. “We Mumriks aren’t made for hibernatin’.”

Snufkin crosses his arms over his chest. “I would have slept just fine,” he argues. “I had a long sleep already. I just need to bathe, then I’ll sleep again until spring.”

She grins, beginning to serve the soup in bowls. “Ye know how long ye've beenn sleepin'?” He doesn’t answer, because he really doesn’t know. All he knows is that there’s no flowers, and there’s snow everywhere, and the sea is gone again – he’s awake far too early for it to be spring. “A few days.”

His eyes pop wide, and Too-ticky chuckles heartily. She places a bowl of soup in his hands, and they both sit down on the floor to eat.

“About that bath…” she says as Snufkin chows down on the soup, his stomach filled with only pine needles. “A’ll need to move some stuff if you wantae use this sauna. Might use it myself, while it’s cleared. Only if yer okay with it, of course.”

Snufkin smiles, nodding. “I’ll help.”

“We’ll clear it up after lunch. Now eat, ye'll need more in your belly ‘an just pine needles. A growin' mumrik has to 'ave fish.”

After lunch, Snufkin moves everything of Too-ticky’s (which is thankfully not too much) out, and sets it in a pile not too far away. Some of her items move out on their own accord, floating above the ground – Snufkin supposes he’ll ask about that later. Meanwhile, out in the cold, Too-ticky said she’d be gathering some firewood.

Everything’s going fine until it’s time to undress. Too-ticky gives him plenty of space, for which he is grateful for, and he supposes he could always ask her to bathe alone. It’s gotten late by now, so he can barely see in the dark, but he notices her out of the corner of his eye and their similarity as a species certainly doesn’t end at their paws.

He scratches at his chest.

“Is something the matter? You’ve bin scratchin’ a lot, there.”

 _It’s nothing_ , he wants to say, but he’s never really known another Mumrik before. Not one that looks like him, with a furless nose and wide eyes and soft curves, and it’s overwhelming how much they look alike. She’s bigger, of course – way bigger since she’s an adult, and her fur is softer and cleaner and the colour of straw, while his is matted and coppery.

“We look alike,” he says, gesturing at his chest. “I don’t know if I like it…”

“Yer taking care of yerself though, aren’t ye?”

“I’ve always taken care of myself.”

Too-ticky sighs knowingly. “It’s not always so simple.”

He thinks of how he needs a brush but it’s too much stress and effort to try, he thinks of how chafing and sores blend into the natural red of his fur until they're almost indistinguishable, and he thinks of how the bandages around his chest leave angry lines and how his breath comes heavier with the effort and he sees her and there’s none of that.

“Does it hurt when you do it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll show ye, little mumrik,” she promises.

The bath is relaxing. Unfortunately, there’s no fresh birch to oil their skin but they enjoy themselves anyway, chatting like old friends.

They handle some serious topics – times people mistook Snufkin for a girl Mumrik because of his shape and his lack of fur and his soulful eyes, how he heard that smoking makes the voice deeper and all the mumrik men he saw with pipes in his travels, how just before hibernating, he noticed some less than desirable changes to his body shape and took to stealing from Moominmamma’s medicine cupboard, as awful as it made him feel to steal from someone so friendly. Too-Ticky listens closely, and tells him he doesn't need to do any of that while he’s with her; he reluctantly agrees. She promises him she’ll have taught him all he needs to know by winter.

Too-Ticky tells her own story for a long time. She talks about small, invisible Shrews that are with them right now, and one brushes past Snufkin’s toes and makes him giggle. She says she was invisible once, and it took her a long time to work out who she was, and that she wants to be the person she needed in those times, so she talks to invisible creatures, and perhaps teaches a young Mumrik how to be himself safely. She moved to Moominvalley only recently; her old workshop got destroyed during the comet, and perhaps it was a good thing she moved on. She heard of the friendly Moominvalley from a traveller.

They talk still as they roll in fresh powdered snow after their bath – Snufkin confesses how he misses the sight of the sea, but Too-Ticky reassures him that the frozen ocean has its own personality, one just needs to look beyond what they see (much, she says, like invisible people). In all his travels, he has become quite wise and experienced. Yet, she’s totally unique, and with much to teach him that he never knew, and all without having moved around much herself.

Dressing without the bandages is a much freer feeling for a moment, but he can’t help but notice the way his smock sits when he puts it on, even if Too-ticky assures him it’s barely noticeable.

They eat grilled fish for dinner, and Snufkin sleeps on the floor because he's rather used to it that way. It’s still cold when he wakes, and Too-Ticky jokes to him that he slept for a week, but he's certain this is untrue. 

There is something different about her, however.

“You look…” he struggles to wrap his head around it. “More ladylike today.”

“Aye,” Too-Ticky agrees, “It’s because I’ve got something to show you,” she explains, and whistles at the Shrews.

The Shrews come from beneath one of the stools, carrying with them what looks much like a singlet (something he recalls seeing much of during his time in prison). It’s far too wide for Snufkin, obviously belonging to Too-Ticky, but what exactly it means, he isn’t sure.

“Reminds me of prison,” he remarks, which makes Too-Ticky laugh. 

“This is different,” she reassures him. “Thank you,” she tells the Shrews as she picks it up. “It’s called a binder. Works like ye bandages do, only comfier, easier, and it won’t hurt any.”

Snufkin frowns. “It won’t fit me, though.”

“Aye, it’s too big for a wee lad like ye. And ah’m not one for sewin’.” She hands the article to him, and he holds it in his paws. It’s strong, but stretchier than he expects it to be. “We’ll have tae make ye a new one.”

He hands it back. “I don’t like things that are new. They don’t quite fit my body, right.”

“Is that so? Yet the bandages fit yer body perfectly fine, I spose?”

Snufkin blanches.

After a long moment of embarrassed silence, he says, “I can sew a little.”

For a few days, Snufkin devotes the majority of his spare time to sewing himself something that works. The first attempt, he finds, is too stretchy, and not flat enough. The second he uses a new material, but Too-Ticky takes one look at the strained way he breathes and tells him to try again. By the time he's made the first successful binder, there are four that don't quite do the job, and he supposes he can turn to bandages to replace the ones he stole. 

Too-Ticky helps, of course. He can tell she’s a little bothered fishing without it, but he needs hers to know what he’s doing, as he’s not so great with drawn patterns. She says she takes it off at night anyways and prefers not to wear it on days she’s uppity. When he’s finished the final product, she gives him a demonstration of how to put it on, which he follows because it’s still quite stiff. She says it gets easier with practice and has to help him when he gets stuck. 

It's around this point he's finally got a good remark about the effectiveness of the bandages over the binder as far as fitting him goes, but he bites it back. 

Too-Ticky offers many warnings. If he wears it too long, or it isn’t comfortable and it makes things more difficult on his body, then he might damage himself so much he can’t wear it again. 

If he sleeps in it, she says, he could have trouble breathing through the night, and he’d be over-wearing it to the point of hurting. She makes him leave it at the bathhouse every night before he goes back to Moomintroll’s room.

Taking them off is good, because if he doesn't want to get itchy, then he'll need to wash it off regularly. 

The lessons don’t end there.

He’s moved back into Moominhouse since he made himself the binder, and he's been sleeping for days or weeks at a time regularly. He thought it was still just a joke at first but the snowfall is far too strong to be happening overnight, and things change so much when he returns to Too-Ticky every morning he wakes up. One morning, the day is long, then when he next wakes up, it's not even a few hours. He's hibernating, but he also isn't. 

He supposes he's thankful for all the wonderful dreams he gets to have, but he cannot help but envy the Moomins, who don't have to live with the dreariness of winter.

“Why can’t we hibernate?” he asks, sipping his coffee as Too-ticky pushes a comb through the ruff on his neck. It hurts much less than it did the first time she did this, and he supposes he’ll have to make some sort of routine out of it. Apparently, it’s not so hard to groom oneself, but it’s quite bothersome without a companion to talk to.

She thinks about it for a long time. “Truth be told, ah dinnae think we can’t. Still might be a possibility.”

“Well, why do we have trouble, then?”

“Mumriks nap a trifle more than other creatures do,” Too-Ticky supposes. “Ah once met one who slept more than half the day, every day.”

Snufkin doesn’t feel like he fits in this category. He may like his afternoon naps, but he goes to bed quite late, and wakes up at dawn every morning. “Or could be tha’ our stomachs don’t work like a Moomintroll’s. We can’t load up on pine needles and be full for months lit they can. Fresh fish is best for us.”

“You’ve met a lot of Mumriks,” Snufkin observes, a little shy. “I don’t believe I’ve met many at all.”

“Not sociable in the way people expect, either,” Too-ticky adds. “Ne'r saw a Mumrik as friendly as a Moomintroll, but I ne’r saw one turn down someone in need of help, either.”

“Moomintrolls are very friendly,” Snufkin agrees, feeling hot in the face. “I don’t think I’ve met anyone quite so nice as Moomin is. And his Mamma and Pappa, too, they feel like…”

“Home?” she guesses.

“Yeah.”

Too-Ticky grooms him in silence for a while, until she attacks a particularly vicious knot on his shoulder. “Sorry,” she says, but keeps brushing until the knot is gone.

“I thought hibernating with Moomin would be nice,” Snufkin confesses. “We haven’t known each other long, but he’s so friendly and brave and resourceful. He knew exactly what to do when we were running from that comet, and I should think that had he not found me on that beach, I’d have been quite hopeless as it approached.”

Too-Ticky makes an understanding noise in her throat. Snufkin continues, “It seemed like this might be a place I can finally stay. Like a family. But I’m not so sure anymore… I can’t hibernate through the winter like they can.”

“And what aboot staying up all winter with Too-Ticky?” she asks.

Snufkin lets out a joyful breath. “No,” he says, “Definitely not. You’ve been great, but… this isn’t right for me.”

“Didn't think so,” she replies, and then she’s covering his freshly groomed fur with starch, which is one of the many tricks she’s shown him to steer clear of discomfort.

He smiles to himself because he’s happy – so happy that she understands him. In ways he’s never been understood before.

“Where will you be in the spring? The Moomins will need their bathhouse back.”

“Ah’ll stay where I want to, when I want to,” she explains. “Much in the way we Mumriks do. Ah just need somewhere to bunker down while it’s cold.”

Snufkin thinks about where one might go during the cold for a long while.

The Lady of the Cold passes through Moominland; Snufkin stays inside with Too-Ticky, and she cranks her music box and he learns how to imitate the sound on his own harmonica. They don’t hear the Lady’s twisted tune, but he does peek at her through one of the windows.

Too-Ticky teaches him how to fish in the sea, and he finds himself impressed with the strange cave she’s fashioned for it. He wants desperately to see the ocean beneath it brimming with life, but doesn’t dare touch the ice water. He discovers foraging for roots, and finds it much less pleasant than hunting for mushrooms or berries, or stealing from Hemulen farmers. Too-Ticky laughs when he runs out of tobacco, raiding Moominpappa's farm with no luck, and he spends a few weeks terribly cranky over everything. 

He becomes quite used to only binding throughout the day; there’s no pain in his chest, and he breathes easier than he has in a long time (that may also have to do with the smoking, Too-Ticky informs him), and the binder itself has grown to his shape now; comfortable and reassuring. Spring is becoming close now, and he wonders what the valley will look like when the flowers and birds return, as he loves flowers and birds ever-so-much.

She warns him of all sorts of things that will happen as he grows, and prepares him like no other Mumrik ever could. They enjoy each other’s company in pleasant quiet, and every time he wakes up she’s there to fill his body with enough soup to send him asleep for days once again. 

It’s a nice adventure, but certainly not a living situation he can take in permanence.

"Did you notice that the birds fly south in the autumn?" he asks her as he stirs a pot of soup, helping her because it's the least he can do after everything she's helped him with. 

Too-Ticky nods. "That's because it's much warmer south."

“I don’t think I want to leave Moominvalley,” he says vaguely.

“That so?”

Snufkin throws in the last of the roots he’d scavenged from the snow, adding a fresh and interesting new aroma to the pot that he hopes will be good enough to keep him asleep until spring, which isn’t far away now. “It is. I like Moomintroll and his friends. And this valley is peaceful – there’s no jails or parks close by, and it’s quiet, and everyone’s friendly and adventurous. There’s so many places I could put up my tent, and with all this forest there’s plenty to explore if I grow tired of the river and the ocean, which I don't suppose I ever will.”

He looks out the window, at the snow which has thinned to soggy patches, and the poplars all covered in white under a grey sky, and his smile falters just a little bit.

“Ah’m sensing a ‘but’ here,” Too-Ticky remarks.

“But I don’t think I can stand it here in the winter…” he finally admits. “I like meeting new people, and going on adventures. I like the sea, and the warmth. I like flowers and _birds_. And there isn’t a whole lot of that here in the winter. I’m glad for this winter, I'll keep it forever in my memories, but I’d like to experience new things.”

She nods, as if this is what she expected, and she hands him her bowl to fill with the bubbling stew he broils. “Ah understand,” she assures him. “Ye’ve been a tramp since ye can remember, and winter can rather sully that free spirit,”

Snufkin feels his heart flutter. He fills both their bowls, sitting down beside her to eat what will hopefully be his last meal before the spring.

There's an unseen pressure to say more while they eat, but he can't find the will to act on it. Their time together, he fears, is drawing short. 

“I’m going to sleep until spring,” he tells her.

“Ah won't be here when ye wake, then. Ah’m gonna have to find a place to camp.”

“Perhaps we’ll see each other again during the year.”

“Bu’ never again in winter.”

“Never again in winter, no.”

He washes his bowl outside with clumps of wet snow, and smiles at her one last time before he leaves. 

She doesn’t remind him to take off the binder, but he knows by now that it’s what he must do. There’s not a chance he’ll sleep until spring with it still on. He’ll wake up earlier than Moomintroll to put it back on, that’s what he’ll do. It’s comfortable sleeping in a bed beside him, and as he closes his eyes and breathes in the warm, homely air, it’s nice to rest assured that when he opens them the flowers and the river and the sea will be back, and birds will sing along to his spring tunes and they'll dance together under a great blue sky. And when the Moomins wake up, they'll have many fun adventures. 

And with such happy thoughts on his mind, he falls asleep with the most wonderful dreams. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading.
> 
> If you bind... Please, bind safely. Bandages and tape are going to hurt you, and even a homemade binder like I mention Snufkin making here can be harmful if not made correctly. If you bind unsafely, you can cause severe (even fatal) damage to your ribs and lungs, and it can get to a point that you can't ever bind again, or get top surgery. Snufkin is portrayed a lot as binding with bandages, and while I agree that this makes sense within canon, you should really be considerate about what people new to binding will assume from it.


End file.
